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Office of Elementary and Secondary Education

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Overview:

The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), is one of eight offices within the United States Department of Education (ED). The OESE oversees the quality of education received by students in elementary and secondary (high school) schools across the United States. This is done through their six main programs: Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality Programs, Impact Aid Programs, Office of Indian Education, Office of Migrant Education, School Support and Technology Programs and lastly School Achievement and School Accountability Programs. Through these programs the OESE works to improve the quality of teaching and learning within elementary and secondary schools as well as ensure equal access to services and ensure equal opportunity.

 
An example of one of OESE’s programs is their Early Reading First Program. The program is administered by the office of Student Achievement and School Accountability Programs. The Early Reading First Programs provide grants to early childhood centers to improve their language, cognitive skills and early reading programs. This is one of the main literacy programs under the No Child Left Behind NCLB. The ultimate goal of the program is increase literacy among children in high poverty areas with the hope of enabling all children to read at grade level. 
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History:

The U.S Department of Education was created in 1980 by combining offices from several federal agencies.The OESE was a part of the new Department of Education and was created to enforce and implement the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and its many amendments and formulate funding programs related to Elementary and Secondary Education. Whether or not the OESE’s programs and policies have been successful in improving the quality of education across the U.S has been greatly debated. The constitutionality of the Department of Education itself has also been highly questioned since the first Office of Education was created in the late 1800’s and abolished soon after. The Federal government’s involvement into education has been called an unconstitutional intrusion into State and community affairs, and many Presidential candidates had the Department’s abolition as a platform for their campaigns.

 

 
After the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the Department of Education’s budget increased by over 66% from 2002 to 2004, with steady increases up to 2007.
 
An Administrative History of the Creation of the U.S. Department of Education (by Lary C. Ramp, J. Stephen Guffey, Marsha Kidd Guffey) (PDF)

 

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What it Does:

OESE programs are authorized by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and were reauthorized by numerous amendments to that Act and also the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

 

 
The Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality Programs - Role is to administer several formula and discretionary grant programs. Their grants and programs are aimed at after school learning center services, improving the quality of teaching – setting a universal standard as well as programs that ensure that students, especially low-performing students, can meet State academic content. The organization of these programs is administrated by executive policy and legislative proposals.
 
Impact Aid Programs – Disperses impact aid payments to local education agencies that are financially burdened by federal activities, such as local education agencies obligation, and the activities needed, to meet the requirements of NCLB. The school districts that these aid payments are allocated to are school districts with portions of land that are owned by the Federal Government or that have lost property tax revenue due to the presence of tax-exempt Federal property. This includes, Indian lands, military bases and low-rent housing properties. The challenge that these schools face is they must provide a quality education to the Indian and other Federal lands while working with less local revenue that is available to other local school districts.
Congress has been providing financial assistance to these school districts through the Impact Aid Program since 1950.   
 
Office of Indian Education – This office was created to meet the educational needs of American Indians and Alaskan Natives by supporting the efforts of local educational agencies, Indian Tribes and postsecondary institutions, with the goal of giving these children the ability to achieve the same challenging state standards as all students. 
 
Office Migrant Education – Administers grant programs that are aimed at providing academic and other services to children of migrant works. These funds are given to ensure that migratory children are provided with appropriate education services in order for them to not be penalized in any manner by disparities, in terms of graduation requirements understanding the curriculum and other state content. The main goal of the grants is to make sure that migrant children’s special needs are meet and that they graduate with a high school diploma. 
Some examples of the services that are provided by educational institutions as a result of the grants are: bilingual and multicultural instruction, career education services, counseling and testing services, health services and preschool services. 
 
School Support and Technology Programs – Provides funds for education technology, school facilities, parent information assistance centers and comprehensive education assistance centers, as well as administering the implementation of flexibility provisions in the NCLB. The flexibility initiatives give states and schools districts and others, flexibility in how they use federal program funds, form the School Support and Technology Programs that support school improvement funds. 
Another example of a School Support and Technology Program is the ED Tech State Program which gave grants with the goal of improving student achievement through the use of technology in elementary and secondary schools.     
 
Student Achievement and School Accountability Programs – This office works to improve the academic achievement of students in schools that serve low-income communities. This is accomplished primarily through the administration of programs under Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This office works to improve teaching and learning in public schools by holding educators accountable to getting each student to achieve at high levels. 

Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytic Report on High School Graduation (Editorial Projects in Education Research Center) (PDF)

 

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Controversies:

There have been several controversies surrounding whether or not the OESE’s programs are actually improving the quality of education in the U.S. Specifically, there has been Controversy around the OESE’s Reading First program and its effectiveness. Reading First awards grants to states and are then used by the states to buy teaching materials and pay for training.

 

 
The inspector General of the Department of Education, John P. Higgins, has accused the Reading First program of cronyism. The Reading First Program’s Grant Application Process – Final Inspection Report (PDF), issued in September 2006, explains how the Department of Education and Reading First administrators have used their authority to benefit the commercial product, “Direct Instruction.” The report has made clear the corruption within the Federal Government and their goal of dominating all reading instruction. The report pointed out the close relationship between the Department of Education and “expert review panels.” The Inspector General found that the Department of Education has dealt with the expert review panels in ways that are contrary to the panel composition envisioned by Congress. The panels were created with the idea of having a non-biased critique on the educational programs or polices they are presented with. The Department of Education also intervened in order to influence a state’s selection of a reading program. As well as influenced the reading programs being used by local educational agencies. The inspector General has also accused Education Department officials of violating conflict of interest, by maneuvering contracts to favored textbook publishers. These actions have impeded on the program officials accountability and has also affected the overall populations trust in the Department and that it is working for the benefit of their children’s education. 
 
There is also controversy surrounding whether or not the Reading First program actually contributes to the improvement in the quality of education. Gary Stager, a professor at Pepperdine University and Senior Editor of District Administration Magazine, states that the Reading First program has reduced “teachers to script-reading robots and reading to an onerous task.” 
Improving Teacher Quality with Communities of Practice (by Joanne Cashman, Elizabeth Laflin, and Kathleen Paliokas, New Eyes) (PDF)

 

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Comments

N Kyle 1 year ago
and here is another entity dealing with problems of native americans. frankly--they do not need that much help. they seem to be getting along just fine without our government interference. they govern themselves and are not stupid.
Eva 1 year ago
i recently moved here to texas from california. she recently graduated and i feel the transition was from california and she was not prepared to living here in texas the services here there is a 8 to 10 year waiting period! her mentally is of a four year old and only available services for her here are adult senior day care facilities! crying out for help not for myself but for her. please guide me to the right resources.
Eva Garcia 1 year ago
my name is eva garcia, i have a daughter. her name is arianna, she is mentally retarded. we recently moved to texas from california. here in texas there is a 8 to 10 year waiting list for services for special needs individuals. for my daughter to receive services i would have to commit her to a facility and award her to the state of texas so she could receive services faster. arianna has behavorial problems which alot of the facilities here in south texas are not equipped to handle....
Virginia McClanahan 3 years ago
Dear Sen. Arne Duncan, I just wanted to thank you for emphasizing the importance of our childrens' future. As an educator in the PreK-6 grade level, I too do feel that we need to integrate the arts in our public school system. I teach fourth grade as of now. I don't know what grade I'll be teaching next year, no one really does, because of the budget cuts. I also stay two days a week for extracurricular time after school for my drama club activities. The students I teach for these ...

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Founded: 1980
Annual Budget: $16.6 billion (2009)
Employees:
Official Website: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oese/index.html
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
Delisle, Deborah
Assistant Secretary

A former elementary school teacher has been nominated by President Obama to be the next Assistant Secretary of Education for Elementary and Secondary Education. Deborah S. Delisle, who has stated her “firm belief that a zip code should never predetermine the quality of a child’s education,” was nominated on January 23, but the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions has yet to schedule her confirmation hearing.

 

Born in Connecticut in September 1953, Delisle earned a B.S. in Education at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, and an M.Ed. in Special Education at Kent State University in 1986. Delisle began her career as an elementary teacher in Connecticut in the 1970s, relocated to Ohio in 1983, and has served in many roles over the years at the school district level, including as School Principal, Director of Academic Services, Director of Curriculum and Professional Development, and Coordinator of Gifted and Talented Programs.

 

From 2001 to 2003, she served as Associate Superintendent for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District (CHUHSD) in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, and as Superintendent from March 2004 to 2008. She then served as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction for the Ohio Department of Education from October 2008 to April 2011. The end of her tenure was controversial, for her resignation letter charged that Republican Governor John Kasich forced her out by threatening her with dismissal. In a show of support and appreciation, in August 2011 CHUHSD named a building in her honor, the Deborah S. Delisle Educational Options Center, which houses the district’s registration and assessment office for transfer students and an alternative high school.

 

Delisle has served on several education boards, including the Governing Board of the Minority Student Achievement Network, Executive Board of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, and the Council of Chief State School Officers Executive Board. In addition to working in primary and secondary education, Delisle has taught graduate level courses at Kent State, Ursuline College, the University of North Colorado and Simon Frasier University in British Columbia.

 

She is married to Dr. James R. Delisle, a retired professor of education who specializes in issues related to gifted children. They have one son, Matt, now an adult.

 

Former Ohio Schools Chief Deb Delisle Explains What Ohio Can Teach the Nation (by Molly Bloom, NPR/State Impact)

State Schools Superintendent Deborah Delisle Resigns (by Karen Farkas, Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Meet Deb Delisle, Ohio’s New Superintendent (by Deborah Delisle, Columbus Parent)

Deborah Delisle Named State’s New Education Chief (by Karl Turner, Cleveland Plain Dealer)

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Meléndez de Santa Ana, Thelma
Assistant Secretary

The new chief federal official for K-12 education empathizes easily with students who face difficulties in school. Born in 1958 to Mexican immigrants, Dr. Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana arrived at kindergarten unable to speak or read English, and found the daunting task of learning her new language complicated by ostracism from her Anglo classmates. Although her kindergarten teacher was helpful and sympathetic, Meléndez de Santa Ana later recalled a humiliating first grade experience, when a teacher placed her in the slowest group of readers. “They called us ‘the buzzards,’ and all we did was recite the alphabet over and over and over again.” Later, Meléndez de Santa Ana was told by a high school counselor she had no chance of going to UCLA. Proving that counselor wrong, she earned a B.A. in Sociology from UCLA in 1981 and a Ph.D. in language, literacy and learning from the Rossier School of Education at USC in 1995.  She was confirmed for her new position on July 24, 2009.

 
Meléndez de Santa Ana has spent her entire career in Southern California. She worked in the Montebello Unified School District as a bilingual classroom teacher, middle school assistant principal for curriculum and instruction, and elementary school principal. For the Pasadena Unified School District, she was director of instruction for elementary and middle schools. From 1997 to 1999, she was Director of the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, a $53 million school reform project that worked to improve Los Angeles schools, but had mixed early results. Returning to school administration, she served as Deputy Superintendant and Chief Academic Officer at the Pomona Unified School District from 1999 to 2005. Lured back to the nonprofit world, she worked for a year and a half as Program Manager for the Stupski Foundation, a San Francisco-based non-profit focused on district-level reform, from early 2005 through June 2006. Returning to Pomona in July 2006, Meléndez de Santa Ana served as superintendant of the district, which has more than 40 schools serving more than 33,000 students in Pomona and parts of Diamond Bar, until July 2009, when her nomination to the Department of Education was confirmed by the Senate. 
 
Meléndez is also associated with The Broad Foundation, a Los Angeles-based venture philanthropic organization established by Eli Broad. In 2006 she was among 18 business executives, military leaders, and career educators who were selected by The Eli Broad Center for the Management of School Systems to participate in the Broad Superintendents Academy, a 10-month executive management program to train working CEOs to lead urban public school systems. 
 
Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana Prepares to Raise the Bar (by Mark Petix, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin)
Opening Up the Superintendency (by Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana, California Association of Latino Superintendents and Administrators) (PDF)
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